There is no question about the fact that we had very serious disagreements with my German, French, and Russian colleagues over the Iraq war. But I never stopped talking.

Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.

A sense of shame is not a bad moral compass.

Terrorism threat is serious, and not just to American interests. The assaults in Russia against two airliners, bringing them out of the sky, and against a subway station, and then that horrible scene at the school in Beslan. This kind of terrorist activity no one is immune from it. And so it suggests that we have to do even more together to make sure the civilized worlds join together in the war against terrorism.

Nobody wants to be in a mediocre organization. You don't have the same energy flowing through.

Pissing people off doesn't mean you're doing the right things, but doing the right things will almost inevitably piss people off.

There are lots of countries that are having these kinds of internal civil wars in other parts of the world and nobody is talking about intervening.